I'd encourage people to read this excellent piece in the London Review of Books by someone who was contracted to ghostwrite Assange's autobiography, and who initially felt very sympathetic towards the aims of Assange and Wikileaks: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost... I found it very insightful and nuanced when it comes to Assange and his motivations, presenting him as neither hero nor villain, but someone who started something that he couldn't really handle.
Andrew O’Hagan's article on Assange is rather famous, not only for its contents, but also for being 25,000+ words in a magazine that still pays per word. The LRB can pull it off because they're subsidized by the editor's family funds.
Or like read the Mueller Report which paints him squarely as a villain. He worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election in Trump's favor and then tried to blame Seth Rich. I absolutely cannot fathom how so many people still worship him. He has done some good here and there, but the benefits of things he's leaked are vastly overstated and the harm he has done is very, very real.
> He worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election in Trump's favor
That is not at all a conclusion you can safely take from the Mueller report. Which makes me question whether you actually read it or you consumed it entirely via 2nd hand media reports like Buzzfeed and WaPo.
There is no evidence he was colluding with them, he had encrypted conversations with a GRU agent who had concealed his identity as a hacker, contents of the messages which were never revealed.
Even if he eventually did learn the source why should Wikileaks care where a goldmine of documents comes from? As long as they are authentic.
There’s more than enough motivation for Wikileaks to leak docs by a figurehead of the post 9/11 nation security state, regardless of RU or Trump or petty politics.
I’m sure if the NSA sent him documents about some geopolitical matter they’d leak them too.
> and then tried to blame Seth Rich
He never once directly implicated Seth Rich, the worst thing he did was during a TV interview made a reference to Seths murder and then merely declined to talk about it more:
>> Unbidden, Assange brought up the case of Seth Rich. When asked directly whether Rich was a source, Assange said "we don't comment on who our sources are". Subsequent statements by WikiLeaks emphasized that the organization was not naming Rich as a source.
He also claimed he had physical proof of an inside job, which is entirely possible he was completely taken by the GRU agent who manufactured plausible sounding proof and Assange bought it. These agents are extremely clever and capable, and Assange was in a very poor mental state at the time.
His only true ‘crime’ is not talking about Seth after to appease crazies on the left who see RU conspiracy around every corner nor tamed the right looking to fan the flames on US gov conspiracy theories.
but let’s be honest, that wouldn’t have stopped the hyper partisans on either side. They don’t care either way.
All they want is black/white villains.
It's so crazy how he flipped from a darling of the left to a darling of the right. Now that seemingly Biden is the one to let him out he's going to be a darling of the left. And when Trump gets in and pardons him to get back at Biden he'll be a darling of the right again.
I did read it and your comment is technically all true, but it's also a very charitable reading of the information. He most probably knew who they were and the Trump campaign was in the loop on his activities. He's never corrected the record to my knowledge. He has a pretty bad track record of protecting his sources, so offering a reward for information on who killed Seth Rich seems like a deliberate misdirection. The entire situation feels very intentional and you'd have make a bigger leap of logic to say he was so totally fooled rather than he knew and just didn't care.
I do agree that it's not constructive to say "he's a villain" but it seems the prevailing trend is "he's a hero" and he is most definitely not a hero.
> Or like read the Mueller Report which paints him squarely as a villain
That's simply not true, Mueller investigated Assange, but declined to prosecute due to lack of evidence that he was complicit or culpable in any crimes. He also didn't totally clear wikileaks or Assange, but noted there were 'factual uncertainties'.
I find it nauseating that Assange is being valorized as some champion of free speech/journalism, but with respect to Mueller, Assange was far from being a 'villian'.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/new-muelle...
that is indeed an excellent read, thank you for sharing it
You're welcome. I dread these Assange threads on HN because they often seem to devolve into people shouting past each other, and this is the most thoughtful piece, with direct and lengthy access to Assange, that I've read.
That was indeed interesting, although his claim that the rape charges were a separate issue that had nothing to do with the US trying to get hold of him, and that Assange made a mistake by not going to Sweden to fight them, has aged pretty badly.